


More Chips Off The Stone Gryphon

by rthstewart



Series: The Stone Gryphon [6]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, 3 Sentence Fiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 05:24:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3638358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fills from the 3 sentence ficathon; includes some fills that are canon compliant and others that are AU, Everybody Lives, Nobody Dies</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Battle Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts), [Adaese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adaese/gifts), [marmota_b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmota_b/gifts), [Saroise7](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Saroise7).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Saroise7, battle scars (physical or emotional)

 

  
**Peter**  
  
Two days before he’d chased the White Stag in search of a wish and an heir for the High King’s throne, his lover had teased him that even after nearly two decades of battles, tourneys, skirmishes, and brawls, his own skin was still smoother than her own, knotty silver bark. Peter thought his scars impressive enough and was actually pretty chuffed about the rakish slice over his left eye (pirate cutlass), the impressive ridges across his shoulders (Ettin hobnailed boot that pierced his mail shirt), and the long, angry stripes of red on his forearms (taken in defence against an assassin’s knife). On the other side of the Wardrobe, he would examine himself by the stark light of an unforgiving bulb in the lavatory mirror and though the scars were gone, Peter could feel where the skin puckered upon his brow and back, like the amputee who still felt the phantom pain of the missing limb.  
  
**Lucy**  
  
The near weekly canings and switch across her palms will never silence Lucy’s challenge to the vile man who preaches at her school’s daily chapel about blind obedience to a vindictive and unloving power. She’s too furious to even cry even when Marjorie gently tends her bruised and bleeding skin. These scars Aslan’s Lioness bears proudly.  
  
**Edmund**  
  
One night, feeling guilty for kissing a girl, he confessed to Mum that he still missed his wife, for all that she’d been dead a thousand years, or four (and he knew Morgan would have chided him for his poor accounting of the days).  


“No, you probably won’t love anyone as you loved Morgan,” Mum agreed, “but I do think that, with time and healing, you could come to love someone differently, just as you did with that curmudgeonly Tiger after your first Guard died.”  
It took another three years, eight months, and twenty-two days and a heated argument with Miriam about peas and the fastest route to the Middle Temple before Edmund realized that loving once didn’t preclude loving again.  
  
**Susan**  
  
Her siblings always tell her to not dwell upon Rabadash and the men and Narnians who died at the siege of Archenland, that it was not her fault, that whatever miscalculation of hers did not justify the gross violent, response, that she is forgiven of whatever sin she alone perceives. They don’t understand, even Edmund who knows regret and atonement so intimately. Being forgiven does not erase the guilt and every day in her prayer to Aslan, Susan renews her vows to make right for England where she failed Narnia.

 

 


	2. Who says girls aren't as good as boys?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexism and misogyny fall on deaf, tufted ears.  
> For Sroise7, Narnia, Lucy, who says girls aren't as good as boys?

The Archenland Ambassador pompously explains to the young Monarchs that it is unseemly and uncouth for the Queen Lucy to train alongside her brothers, to ride out to patrol their country’s Northern borders, and to sail the coastline to defend against brigands and pirates.

“It is of course well known that fair girls are simpler, weaker, less deft, and suited by nature and inclination to breed and await the pleasure of the stronger, wiser sex; humouring the Little Queen so impugns the Royal Dignity of Narnia.”

The Lord Ambassador’s third sentence of instruction dies in the making, drowned out by the snarl of a she-Wolf, the scraping of a Tigress’ claws upon stone, and the growls of a Gryphon who proposes testing the Ambassador’s claim by snapping off his pudgy arm in her beak.


	3. Of Woodpeckers and Weasels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Adaese, And the Weasel said to the Woodpecker, "Fly me to the moon."

 ooOOoo

Watching the little Weasels scamper up the trees and on to the backs of their waiting Woodpecker mounts, Lucy reflected that if one could not send Otters aboard Hummingbirds into battle, this was surely the next best thing for Woodpeckers were the boldest of perching Birds and the Weasel were, well, _Weasels_ , a handful of lighting fast, merciless, biting, snapping, viciousness; together they comprised a formidable, bloodthirsty commando unit.

  
One by one, the Woodpeckers eagerly launched from the trees, unperturbed by their hissing, snarling passengers, and eagerly flapped in the direction of the raiders’ forward lines, their odd silhouettes a shadow flitting across a waning Moon.  
  
Those bandits would never know what hit them – err…fell on them.

ooOOoo

Inspired by [the photo captured by Martin Le-May](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31711446)

 


	4. You survived another year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Adaese, Narnia, Marsh-wiggles, a birthday celebration

“Thanks for the rabbit stew, Puddleglum, it’s the perfect present,” Jill said, spooning up another delicious mouthful and tremendously happy that they weren’t celebrating her birthday on Ettinsmoor with another meal of smoked eel over a peaty fire.  
  
“A folded leaf is the best I could do for a birthday card, and there wouldn’t be a cake any way, because of the rationing, but you can have the whole blanket tonight,” Scrubb said being uncommonly nice about it, “and at least none of Them will be giving you the bumps.”  
  
“Wiggles don’t hold with celebrations, of course,” Puddleglum said, taking a deep draw on his pipe, “but we’ve got a tradition of celebrating birthdays because managing to live another year without being killed by Giants, flamed by Dragons, or sinking into the marsh and never being seen again is cause for optimism, especially since you'll surely die of a pox the next day.”

 


	5. Kingfishers catch fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Marmota_b, Narnia, Kingfishers, they are the king's fishers

  _As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame  
_ By Gerard Manley Hopkins

> As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
> 
> As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
> 
> Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
> 
> Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
> 
> Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
> 
> Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
> 
> Selves — goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,
> 
> Crying _What I do is me: for that I came._  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> I say more: the just man justices;
> 
> Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
> 
> Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
> 
> Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
> 
> Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
> 
> To the Father through the features of men's faces.

 

Peter stared at the Hopkins poem, trying to puzzle out what the Professor meant about being an expression in verse of Scotus and _thisness_ , but his eyes glazed over trying to pierce the fog of medieval metaphysics and what bearing it had upon _kingfishers catching fire, dragonflies drawing flame_ , and selves goes itself… myself speaks to whom, and why crying, “What I do is me: for that I came” – the next stanza did the Professor mean he should be thinking about Edmund with “the just man justices” quote – and why couldn’t he just figure this out or go and stab something with a sword?  
  
Professor Kirke leaned back in his squeaky desk chair and into the awkward silence of Peter's struggle, explained, “Hopkins tells us that each of these things, the kingfisher, the dragonfly, the bow, the pebbles, and the just man all do what each is intended to do, inherent within, and what by their nature they should and must do, a glorification of and unification of purpose, form, and function.”  
  
But Peter didn’t, couldn’t, respond with anything beyond a dumb nod and the Professor added so kindly it made his cheeks burn, “You are likely more familiar with this concept in the incarnation, _once a King, always a King_.”  


ooOOoo

  
The principle of haecceity, thisness, or that what is is [part of the philosophy of Duns Scotus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haecceity)


End file.
